


Catalyst

by tristesses



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Dark Rey (Star Wars), F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Inappropriate Use of the Force, Jedi Ben Solo, Seduction to the Dark Side
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-21 02:19:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16150487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tristesses/pseuds/tristesses
Summary: "I saw the dark of the night and I wanted it. Desire for a dark thing was a dark thing in me."Or: Snoke makes a different choice. Rey and Ben reap the whirlwind.





	Catalyst

**Author's Note:**

> Summary quote is from "Hollowing" by Shay Vera-Cruz. This fic also contains a brief scene of self-harm.

The girl is in the desert, alone. She simmers like water left in the harsh sun, she runs cold and hot like the desert nights and days, she is gritty with sand and with the bitterness of abandonment. She is in the desert, alone, confused. She climbs the carcasses of ships like a carrion bird and methodically tears them to pieces, searching for something to trade for food and water. When she falls—and she rarely does—she catches herself in mid-air, lowers herself gently to the ground. No broken bones for this little bird, not when she has such power, and so young.

She has potential. Her bloodline may be weak, but after all, was Anakin Skywalker not born of a slave?

And as for the boy, with his mighty Skywalker blood—he has been coaxed into darkness from the womb and still he resists, still he turns to his traitor mother and his foolish uncle for guidance. Let him seek them out, then; he is still young, but the seed of darkness has been laid within his soul already. Let it fester, let it grow. He will come in time.

But the girl in the desert, alone…

Snoke shifts focus. He reaches out, insidious. Her mind is so young, easily molded. She is a girl in the desert; he will make a desert out of her, and then she will come to him. They both will.

* * *

  
She calls herself Rey, not like sunlight but like gamma rays—scorching, irradiating, deadly. With her Knights of R'iia, she is the enforcer of the First Order, the shadow figure that deals in death and only shows mercy when her whim dictates it.

Ben thought she'd wear a mask, somehow. She doesn't. She wears black robes and distinctive songsteel gauntlets, luminescent and flashing silver-white, in sharp contrast to the bloody crimson of her double-bladed saberstaff. And she's young—so young, a good decade his junior. And when she smiles—

"Hello, Ben," she says lightly, and he swallows, grips the hilt of his lightsaber harder. The smile illuminates her whole face, makes those hazel eyes glow. She looks at him and it's like she's stripping him open, clothing then skin then muscle, all the way down to the bone.

"You know my name," he says stupidly. Of course she knows his name; half the galaxy knows him by sight, the famous son of Leia Organa Solo, heir to Luke Skywalker's legacy. "I suppose even Sith lords surf the holonet."

She laughs, and says, "I like you, Ben. Did you know I've been keeping an eye on you?" She gestures at the snowy forest around them, trees towering like sentinels. "Even before you tried to come and destroy my base."

"You and the rest of the galaxy," he snaps. They're circling each other, waiting for a sign of weakness. Ben won't show any, not now. "I'm not exactly incognito."

"You're mistaken," she says. "I don't pay much attention to the news. I don't care much for politics. But I feel you, Ben. Here." She thumps her chest, right where Ben is most conscious of the throb of his connection with the Force. "Don't you feel me?"

"Never," he lies, and she laughs again, that laugh like bells. She lowers her saberstaff slightly—just slightly—but it's enough. Ben lunges for her, swinging his lightsaber down from above his head in a killing blow ( _Master Luke would be disappointed_ , he thinks in the back of his mind), only to find that her move was a feint; she whirls and catches his blade with hers, ominous red against blue like the sky over Yavin IV. Step back, strike again—she descends upon him like a whirlwind and he parries, wincing under the Force-aided blow. He's stronger than her physically, but if she's going to use the Force in this way, it's going to be a tougher battle than he thought.

"You're cocky," she says conversationally, as if she read his mind. But he would have noticed her intrusion into his head—he would have. "I like that. But is it merited?"

"Try and find out," he says through gritted teeth, and she takes his invitation.

She fights like no Jedi he's ever dueled, ignoring the constraints of the traditional forms and striking instead like a sand viper—fluid, cunning, cruel— _unpredictable_. With a wave of her hand, she bats him across the clearing; he skids painfully on his shoulder until he crashes into a tree. Its boughs tremble and loose their burden of snow on him, burying him in white. And his lightsaber— _where is his lightsaber?_

He fights his way free of the snow, wild-eyed, adrenaline pumping through his veins, making him light-headed, and finds his lightsaber sticking out of the snow. Rey has paused, watching him keenly. Waiting for him. Playing with him.

"Do you think this is a game?" he shouts hoarsely across the clearing, and staggers to his feet. His lightsaber jumps into his hand a split-second before Rey summons it with the Force; he grips it tight and shoves back with a wave of energy that makes her stumble. Anger is rising in him, that tide of feeling Master Luke always warned him about—a seductive heat that blurs his vision and makes his muscles clench.

_Give in_ , she whispers in his mind, and he yells and charges.

This time, he does not fight like a Jedi. This time, he fights to kill. The ground trembles beneath them—he barely notices, focused on the attack—Rey hastily parries, but this time he is the unstoppable force, and soon she is fighting to survive, not to play as she had been before. 

She's smiling, grinning, delighted, and a small, quiet part of Ben knows he's lost this fight.

His crossguard locks with the metal of her staff, and with a twist of his wrist, he tears it from her grip and sends it flying with a backwards stroke, his blade slicing downward on the return. She flings up her arms and takes the blow across those songsteel gauntlets—her iron posture falters, and Ben takes advantage of the moment and kicks her in the stomach, sending her sprawling.

_Now it is time_ , a voice whispers in his head—his voice. _The killing blow. Do it—_

"No!" he cries out, and stumbles backward, dropping his lightsaber into the snow. His head throbs and he is still so angry, all this hatred and nowhere for it to go—

"Ben," Rey says softly, wheezing with each inhale; he probably broke a rib or two. "Ben, look at me."

He looks at her. Her voice is magnetic; how could he not?

"I know how you feel," she says. "I feel it too. Please, come with me—you need a friend. I need a friend."

"And your Supreme Leader?" He spits the words like the filth they are, and Rey's face hardens.

"He may be a leader," she says, "but so am I."

Then the ground rumbles—it splits—he staggers backwards and watches her fling herself away from the widening gap between them. Starkiller is crumbling; the mission must have been a success. 

She is a slight figure kneeling in the snow, clutching her side, weaponless, alone—the enemy.

_I need a friend._

Ben turns his back on her. Turns his back on her, and feels her eyes burrowing beneath his skin—not angry, but sorrowful. He summons his lightsaber and runs, runs far away from Rey and her too-knowing eyes.

He doesn't look back.

He wants to.

* * *

  
He runs, but not for long.

"How are you doing this?" she asks him, tension radiating through her spine, showing itself in her posture and the way her fingers twitch on the saberstaff at her hip. "Across such a distance? Without the power of the Dark Side at your command?"

"I'm not doing it," he tells her, and regrets it. Maybe it would've been better for her to think he was that strong; maybe it would've made her hesitate next time they crossed blades. But he is curious, and everyone knows the saying about curiosity and the loth-cat. "Can you see my surroundings? I can't see yours."

"Sloppy, Ben Solo," she says. "Sloppy. Giving your enemy information she doesn't have?"

"So that's a no, then," he muses. He's read about situations like these, apocryphal stories in ancient Jedi texts. But a Force bond is only able to exist between master and apprentice; it requires deep knowledge of each other, the kind of understanding that only comes from being comrades-in-arms. This is something else, then. It has to be.

"No," she says with a sigh, breaking into his thoughts. He frowns at her before he realizes she's answering his earlier question. "No, I can't see your surroundings. Where are you?"

The truth is on his lips before he swallows it hard. "None of your business."

"I wonder," she says musingly, and takes a step forward. Another step. "I wonder…"

"What are you doing?" Ben says sharply. His feet are rooted to the ground like a tree, immobile. She comes toward him with a predator's step, eyes alight—eyes curious. He's not the only one who wants to understand.

Ben watches her approach. She wears no gauntlets today, carries no saberstaff. She is dressed only in her black leggings and an undershirt. She looks human, for once. His traitorous eyes linger on her exposed skin, the muscle of her biceps, the delicate curve of her clavicle, the slight swell of her breasts. Mouth gone dry, he drinks her in, and thinks, _She will be the death of me_.

"Ben," she says softly, and touches his cheek with those slim, elegant fingers. They are calloused and strong; he closes his eyes and lets her explore his face, gliding softly over his jawline, his strong nose, brushing her thumb across his lips. On some forbidden instinct, his mouth opens, and she dips her thumb inside, just enough to brush his tongue.

He could bite her now; the blood would taste sweet, her cry of pain sweeter, and the following punishment sweetest of all. He could vent his anger on her, the one person who could take it and walk away laughing. Together, they could—

_Who are you?_ he thinks with desperation, and jerks away from her touch. _What are you becoming?_

"Rey," he says, voice hoarse. "Don't."

"I don't know why you're fighting this," she says, frustration leaking through her usual sanguinity. "Look at this! The Force is bringing us closer; the universe itself wants us to be together! Why are you resisting?"

"I have duties," he snarls back, "people to protect—"

"Duty," she sneers mockingly. "And those people—do they love you? Do they trust you? Can they give you what I can give you?"

Trust. He thinks of his mother, shaking her head at his outbursts; his uncle, watching him warily, afraid of the anger constantly simmering within him, afraid of him.

No. She is trying to corrupt him—trying to force him off the path he was born to walk—

_(The path you are trapped on—)_

"Get away from me!" he screams, and shoves her away with the Force. She goes crashing into the wall; the shelves shake and books topple with the force of the attack.

And Rey vanishes.

Ben stands there, panting, shaking with anger and want. He reaches for the ritual meditation techniques he's known since childhood, but they slip through his fingers like water. No way to calm himself, nowhere to run—

Ben sinks to his knees, wrapping his arms around himself, digging his fingers into his biceps hard enough to bruise. He bites his lower lip hard until blood flows metallic onto his tongue. The pain is centering, focusing his attention from his whirling thoughts to the reality of his body, trembling and tense. Pain, yes; he spies a smashed figurine on the floor, fallen from the shelf, and snatches a ceramic shard, clenches his fist around it. The sharp edges slice into his palm and he focuses on it, a bright star of pain in the center of his madness. He lets it cut him open, like he would let Rey cut him open, until his anger is muted in the back of his mind and he can breathe again.

He opens his hand and looks at the bloody shard. Alderaanian in design, one of the few relics his mother has of her homeworld. Broken, now. He breaks everything he touches, in the end.

He wonders if he would break Rey. Thinks of her smile, her outstretched hand, the core of steel in her eyes and the viciousness in her voice when she said Snoke's title.

He doubts it.

* * *

  
The wound has time to heal before he sees her again, a figure he catches out of the corner of his eye, watching him move through the forms of Djem So.

She should be a shadowy thing, he thinks, a dark secret, meant just for him. Instead, she is brightly illuminated by the glow panels in the mess hall Ben has chosen as his training yard, sitting cross-legged on one of the tables he has shoved to the side to make room for the swing of his lightsaber. The light falls across her face as she tilts her head with interest, casting one side of her face in shadow. This time, he doesn't let her speak first.

"Hello," he says, secure in the knowledge that they are alone. No one ever crosses his path while he's training; he's lost his temper at their interruptions too many times—although he always reins it in, always, always, no matter what Master Luke seems to think. "Are you here to try to seduce me to the Dark Side again?"

"Seduce." Her lips twisted, and he senses he has misstepped. "An interesting word choice. Do you think I mean to seduce you?"

"I meant—just—not in the traditional sense, no," he says, stumbling over his words. "It's a turn of phrase, that's all."

"A turn of phrase," she repeats. She watches him with bright eyes for another minute, and he does nothing but watch her back. Her eyes travel down his bare torso, glistening with sweat, to the lightsaber held ignited in one hand, thoughtful, assessing. But only briefly; then her gaze is on his face, searching for something Ben has no words for. He locks eyes with her and tries his best to peer back, but he doesn't know what he's looking for. A reason, maybe, for this connection between them. He sees only that preternatural brightness, like sunlight, like the plasma of an ignited lightsaber, reflected in her eyes.

"What are you doing?" she asks, nodding at the lightsaber in his hand.

He hefts it, and answers, "Training."

She rolls her eyes at him—Lady R'iia, feared through the galaxy, rolling her eyes in exasperation. Ben tenses, waiting for her to lash out. Instead, she uncurls herself from the table like a sleeping krayt dragon waking lazily in the sunlight, and steps closer to him.

"Show me," she commands, in a voice used to being obeyed.

Ben doesn't mind it. He should.

"It's Form V," he says, and searches her face. "Do you know the seven forms?"

"I never bothered to memorize them all," she says offhandedly, with a shrug of her shoulder. "I learned what I needed to know, and left the rest to rot."

The idea of leaving knowledge to rot is anathema to Ben, but he holds his tongue; isn't she here, after all, asking him to teach her?

(The thought sent prickles up his spine. Rey, asking _him_ to teach her.)

"I use the Djem So style," he says, and shifts into the opening position, lightsaber held above his head, ready to come crashing down upon his opponent. "This is the primary attack stance. From here—" He brings the lightsaber down, a controlled thunder. _Here_ is where his opponent would parry, and _here_ is where he would force their hand and crush them beneath his blow. "—to here. The Falling Avalanche."

"It looks familiar," she comments wryly. Ben smiles, hesitantly, and she meets it with a blinding smile of her own. She glows, Rey does; Ben doesn't know if he's ever met anyone as purely content in her skin as Rey is.

"Yes," he agrees. "I guess it does. Come on, take out your lightsaber. Let's practice."

_Stupid_ , a voice in his head is shrieking, _stupid, stupid, she's your enemy, you piece of bantha fodder._

But she pulls out her lightsaber and ignites it with a snap-hiss, and even the glaring red of the blades can't break the spell of the moment.

"Let's go slow," he says. "You aren't trying to fight me this time—are you?" She shakes her head, her eyes gleaming with amusement. "So stand next to me and mimic what I do."

He's never been a good teacher, but Rey already has the fundamentals down; she follows his guidance, sweeping her blades through each step, modifying the forms to accommodate her double-bladed saber without prompting.

They practice in silence until they are both breathing hard, matching their movements, working in unison like a pair of dancers.

"Why Djem So?" she asks him when they mutually agree on a break. "There are seven forms, so why this one?"

"Ah." A question he has been asked before, one he never quite likes to answer. "It's best for people with larger frames and greater physical strength, who might not be as agile as—well, as someone like you, for example."

"It is a form that values power," she says, without the smile he'd expected. "I see."

"Yes," he says. "You understand. Most lightsaber combat forms are defensive. Djem So is—it doesn't seek to only defend, which puts the wielder at a disadvantage. It seeks to control the situation, to dominate. It wants to win. And there's nothing wrong with that—not if the alternative is losing, or death. There's _nothing wrong with that_."

His voice has risen, he realizes, and he shuts his mouth with a clack of his teeth, clenching his jaw hard. Rey watches him with a terrible compassion in her eyes.

"No," she agrees. "There's nothing wrong with it."

A step forward. Another. She reaches out and places a hand on his chest. The touch runs through Ben like a shockwave, and something cracks within him, a previously-unknown yearning flowing through him like magma pulsing through the planet's crust.

He takes her by the wrist and pulls her close to him, her body not quite touching his. He dares go no further. That note of anger in her voice when he'd said the word seduce—he's already gone too far.

But maybe not. 

Rey closes the distance between them, but stops before her lips touch Ben's. They pause, in this not-quite-kiss, and he can taste their mingled breath, and even though she is a vision, not there in reality, the heat of her body is calling to his heartbeat. Her blood to his blood. And for the first time, he allows the thought to surface in his mind: what they could be, together. What they could do. What it would be like, to touch her body in the flesh.

"Ben," she whispers, and flickers, and is gone.

He stands there alone a long time, thinking.

* * *

  
  
Touch is his weakness, and hers too.

She appears to him again, and this time there is no hesitancy; alone in his quarters, she slips into his arms as easily as smoke and goes on her tiptoes to press her mouth against his. He parts his lips for her, gives in, gives in to Rey and everything she is. Her hands in his hair, her tongue painting a stripe along his throat. His teeth in her lower lip, drawing blood, and she hisses and digs her nails into his neck and doesn't let him go.

If the seduction had seemed deliberate, like he'd initially thought it would be, he would have resisted—so he likes to think. But her hands shake as she undresses him, her breath is rough, and when she sinks to her knees before him, it is with a raw hunger in her eyes that has never been satisfied.

"No," he says hoarsely, and pushes her flat, propping himself on his elbows above her, pressing her thighs open with his knees. Dream-spirit she may be, a being of Force energy, but she is so solid, her flesh as real as it had been when he'd fought her on Starkiller Base. He doesn't like to see her on her knees. "Not like this."

"No," she agrees, and wraps her legs around his waist, arches her back. She is slick and wet at the juncture of her thighs and his animal instinct knows what to do, even if Ben Solo doesn't.

He is not so foolish as to think her moans are a sign of weakness, not when her eyes are open and locked on his face, but a dark part of him thrills at the sound of them, as if they are the cries of a wounded animal, and he a creature on the hunt. She goads him on with her teeth and her nails, scraping like claws down his back. The floor bites into his knees and he doesn't care about the pain, enjoys it, even, a counterpart to the unspeakable pleasure of her body tightening and releasing around him with each thrust.

She doesn't allow him his release, but gets a leg under him and throws him over, climbing atop him to straddle his face. He doesn't know how to do this either, but she shows him how, with her hands fisted in his hair, guiding his tongue and lips to the areas that make her cry out with pleasure. Sweet and bitter and slick and he breathes her in, tastes her, all sound muffled by her thighs, the rub of her skin against his face.

Then she sits back against his chest, panting, and says, "Take care of yourself for me, Ben. I want to watch your face."

He does. Oh, he does, and she watches, and he trembles and moans for Rey R'iia's-daughter, who caresses his cheek while he spasms, and whispers his name tenderly, over and over, until it is the only thing he can hear.

* * *

  
But it's not lust that drives him to hijack the shuttle and leave the Resistance behind to be marched behind Rey through the cold corridors of the Supremacy. Not lust, but a deeper, more potent desire:

_I need a friend._

Ben has never had a friend, not really. Not like this. All his childhood friendships had been shallow things, destroyed by the jagged edges of his emotions; they were never sanded down by time, like his family thought they would be. Rey, though…Rey would cut herself open on him and laugh about it, lick up the blood and heal them both, and together, they could—they _would_ —be stronger than they were apart.

He knows it.

He's seen it.

"I have seen the shape of your future," he whispers to her in the turbolift, his hands locked behind him in binder cuffs, a useless safeguard against a Jedi of his strength (and she knows it). "You will turn to stand by me. It's your destiny."

"Oh, Ben." Her voice is a caress, her smile a kiss. "You've got it all backwards."

She says nothing more as they are escorted into Snoke's presence.

The man is withered and twisted, a monster in a ridiculously garish robe, lacking even a wisp of the strength and menace Palpatine had exuded, even through holorecordings from decades past. _This_ is the feared leader of the First Order? _This_ is Rey's master?

Ben glances at her sidelong, and sees her face, a stoic mask. Her eyes slide to meet his, and something rustles at the back of his mind. No words are spoken, but he feels her meaning all the same: _Strike when the time is right._

"Young Skywalker," Snoke greets him from across his blood-red hall, lined with blood-red guards. What truly great leader needs guards like this? "I have waited so long to meet you. Come closer, closer."

The push of the Force command is heavy in Ben's mind; stubborn, he stands his ground and tosses his head back to meet Snoke's eyes. The Supreme Leader narrows his eyes, and this time he grabs Ben with the Force and pulls.

Ben shoves back, hard, and Snoke hisses, but is undisturbed.

"Unruly creature," Snoke says contemptuously. He gestures to Rey. "My apprentice, have you not tamed him yet?"

"Oh, I have," Rey says. Ben shoots her a quick, searing glance; in his mind, her presence glows soothingly. "But it's just so much fun when he resists, isn't it?"

"You lack discipline, my apprentice," Snoke says to her sternly. "Your flippancy is your greatest weakness." A spark in Ben's mind: Rey's hatred, a firebrand. "But that will change in time." He turns his attention back to Ben. "You, Skywalker-Solo, have finally come to me. It took longer than I thought," he adds, half to Rey. "When I bridged your minds—" Rey inhales sharply at that, her surprise in Ben's mind equal to his own. "—you should have sensed it, and moved sooner."

"Yes, Master," Rey says, lowering her head in a reasonable facsimile of remorse. "Next time, I will act more quickly."

Her urgency pushes at Ben, begging him to _act quickly_. Using the Force, he unlocks the cuffs, but makes no other move.

"You will," Snoke says. "And you will be punished for your actions."

Rey is unmoved, though her anger rises; he has said this before to her, and often. 

That is unacceptable.

Inside Ben, his always-banked rage coalesces into fury, a spitting fire that casts a red haze over his vision, and the Force surges within him. For the first time in his life, he lets the anger feed it, and oh! Oh, the power, sweet like the taste of Rey in his mouth, a pulsing avalanche of power that cascades through him. He roars and ignites his blade. Fire burning blue is the hottest of all.

Beside him, Rey screams too, and in it he hears a decade and more of loneliness, of fear, of hatred and pain and heartbreak, and he lets it pour through him and fuel him, just as surely as his own terrors and sorrows feed her. When Snoke's neck snaps, he's not sure which of them did it.

The guards charge, and the power sings through his nerves and veins, pressing against his skull. He has to let it out or die, so he does, bashing the guards to pieces against the floor. 

With a flicker, he sees both future and present: two guards converging on him, seconds in the future. He strikes in advance, cutting them in two.

Future and present: Rey ducking a guard's blade and slicing his legs out from other him, and as it happens, Ben beheads the guard lunging at her back.

Future, distant future, and present: they fight and they kill and nothing can stop them. Rey is laughing as her dual blades sing through the air. They move in perfect unison, he and Rey, dealing death in their path.

Then it is over. 

It's sudden, the silence that drops over the throne room, full with the thickness of death and the sound of Rey's panting. He can smell the burnt, cauterized flesh of the guards; only people, in the end. Not like he and Rey, no. They are more than just people, more than Jedi or Sith.

"Together," he tells, and he knows the timbre of his voice is mad, and he doesn't care. "Together, we can bring a new order to the galaxy. Let the old things die—" Mother. Uncle Luke. Han Solo. "—the Sith, the Jedi, the First Order, Empire, New Republic—let it all wither and burn—"

"We can carve out a new place," Rey says, and she is glowing, she is beautiful, she is his home now, "just you and me, and we can be free."

They stand together amid the corpses. Through the Force, he can feel them already decaying, each molecule breaking down in the inevitable rotting death of the weak. He and Rey will never be like that.

He crushes her against his body, lips on hers, and she laughs and laughs, her arms tangled around his neck, her sweet satisfaction dancing in the back of his head.

Ben has never felt freer.

**Author's Note:**

> I know Ben's lightsaber in TLJ was green, but the wordplay worked better here if it was blue. It's an AU, who knows what else might have changed?


End file.
